The Challenge
The biggest challenge was to take Cindy’s law experience and make it relevant to business, and create cohesive logical goals that would make the most of her invaluable background.
Possible Approaches
One possible approach, and one that is generally very good for lawyers going into B-school would be to propose goals more on the law side of business (i.e. General Counsel of company X), which would necessitate less of a shift, but here, I felt she had enough substance to make a more daring move and switch to Private Equity.
The Admissionado Approach
The most important thing here was to get out her STORY – her passion, her vision, he innovative mind, her creativity. Coming from a real serious industry which tends to lose itself in legalese, sometimes making the stories touch the reader, making them cohesive and understandable, getting out their concrete results can be real hard. And that’s what it’s all about.
We needed to find a great story hook in order to catch the reader and make Cindy’s story relevant. and she had something amazing in her grandfather’s work in Finance in China, who went against the status quo of his time to become an important player in private equity. With the reader solidly hooked, we had Cindy lay out her specific plan of leaning a PE fund in China, while making use of her vast knowledge of the current state of affairs in China for her to propose a specific solution.
The Result
She got into three top 10 schools, and big scholarship offers from two of them.
Personal Shoutout
Cindy was serious and extremely technical. We needed to tease the personality out of her so she could make a story that would resonate. She played along and we discovered some amazing things about her family, her personality and her passions.